Body painting is all the rage right now. Louis Vuitton featured painted models in its spring/summer 2011 show (baring zebra-striped torsos in lieu of shirts) and now, W magazine rendered Kim Kardashian tin-man silver for its November cover.

I’m finishing work on a beauty book in which I highlight 50 iconic makeup styles and how to achieve them. Body painting didn’t make the cut, but I wonder, If I were to do this book 5 years from now, would it have grown big enough to be considered an iconic beauty look?

Comment and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, the beauty bloggers at Style.com posted an interview with makeup maven Gucci Westman, who got Kim looking sinfully silver for the shoot.  Here’s what she had to say:

So, what was the inspiration behind the silver look?

They wanted to do something a bit different, and because they were working with Barbara Kruger and doing the artwork on the cover, it had to be something that was going to be relatable to her work. Quite graphic and poppy and all of those things. They asked me what color I thought would be the most beautiful on her skin. We didn’t want it to be sensual; we wanted it to be chic. I thought that silver would be the best idea in terms of contrast. It’s the most luminous, gives the most photogenic effect of those metallic paints.

Kim is famously curvy. Did it take a long time to cover her?

No, it didn’t take very long at all—maybe half-an-hour. It’s kind of an easy application, with a sponge.

Doesn’t sound too tricky. Is it something that might have a life off of the runway or the editorial page?

It’s not that easy to do it on yourself. It’s more fantastical. For a show, you put on a show by doing things like that. For this issue, we did it because it was the Art issue—and she has a beautiful body.

And how. Speaking of that body, it has gotten a lot of close scrutiny from the internet commentariat. In particular, everyone is debating whether Kim’s had posterior enhancement surgery. As someone with, ahem, first-hand experience, care to comment?

I don’t know anything about that, I [just] think she’s beautiful. I think Kim Kardashian looks so much like Scarlett Johansson—I never noticed it [before]. There’s some angles where she looks so much like her it’s crazy.